Where we're you when Nixon resigned?

[LincolnMan]

40 years ago I walked into my mothers house in Detroit to find President Nixon on TV announcing his resignation. I was home on leave from the service. Sidebar: I had just purchased the four volume set: Battles and Leaders of the Civil War ( which I still own today). Where we're you all? What were you doing? Studying the Civil War then?

[RJNorton]

Vicki and I spent much of the day watching TV. We were both on summer break from teaching. There will all kinds of hints/reports/indications during the day of what was about to be announced that night.

[BettyO]

I was working as a key punch operator (anyone remember what those were?!) in the membership department of the Automobile Club of Virginia; going to college part time - and just getting into researching the Lincoln assassination - I had been a big student of Victorian social history since my high school days - I was just 20 years old....boy, does time fly!

[L Verge]

I was a housewife with a one-year-old daughter - wishing I could be back in the classroom to discuss the situation with my 8th graders. My most vivid memory, however, was of his departure from Andrews AFB. I live about three miles from the base, and my house is in the north/south flight plan when Air Force One (although I guess it was #2 that day) takes off. The plane was still low enough that I stood on my front lawn and waved good-bye to Mr. Nixon as it flew over.

[LincolnToddFan]

I was a schoolgirl of 14, attending summer school for my first year of high school so that I would have enough credits to graduate early.

I was walking across the grounds of my school eating-you guessed it-STARBURST fruit chews and listening to the resignation speech being blasted on the loudspeakers.

I was far from a fan of President Nixon, but I never loathed him like many of my peers did. My grandmother, a Roosevelt Democrat, was especially gleeful. She had never gotten over the fact that Nixon narrowly beat Humphrey in 1968 and she was apoplectic over the deaths of those kids at Kent State, which she ultimately blamed on Nixon. I'd never seen her so happy as when the Watergate hearings began.

I felt-still do-that Nixon was a brilliant, complicated man who wrestled with a dark side that he allowed to take over his better self. His statement to David Frost in the famous interview ("I gave them a sword") was never more true.

I felt confusion that day, as well as awe, and a pervasive sadness as I munched my candy and strolled across campus.

[LincolnMan]

To continue with my remembrance of that moment when I walked in my mother's house to find the TV on with Nixon making his announcement- I remember I sat down on the couch to watch it. The TV was one of those big floor consoles. I thought at the time that I was watching something that United States history had not seen as yet. It was almost one of those moments like remembering where you were when JFK was shot- almost. I sensed an era had ended- and I think that turned out to be true. My generation had hoped to make a positive change in society- and to some extent we did- but for us Nixon represented the "establishment" - and that was not considered a good thing. We had the naive viewpoints of youth- but by 1974- the "dream was over"- and Nixon's resignation somehow coinsided with that ending.

[LincolnToddFan]

I remember there was an enormous backlash against Gerald Ford for pardoning Nixon after he left office. It possibly cost Ford a second term in office. But I was relieved when Ford presented the pardon. The idea of a former American president in prison stripes is not something I wanted to envision then or now.

Ford paid a steep price, but I think he did the right thing.

[Hess1865]

I was 21. 3 of were getting ready to drive to Florida, visit Daytona Beach, and go to Disneyworld.
We were hanging around my buddy's garage watching Nixon give his speech. I felt bad for the guy.
I knew we were watching history.
And on the drive to Fla., I remember someone stuck a homemade sign on their front lawn saying, 'Lets hope Ford has a better idea'.

[Craig Hipkins]

I was six years old getting ready to go into the first grade. I can remember hearing about all the fuss on the television and radio. Of course I had no idea what it was all about, only that it was world shattering event. I can still remember my fathers response when I asked him why Nixon was no longer President. He simply said "Because he was a bad man."

Craig

[LincolnMan]

I've always been fascinated by Nixon - as far as: what inner strength and resources did he possess to survive the disgrace of his resignation. To some extent he even became sort of an elder statesman to some.

[LincolnToddFan]

Yes!! I totally agree Bill. Anyone who is able to cause my late grandma and so many others to almost foam at the mouth with anger brings out the armchair psychologist buried deep inside me.

He was a man of fierce bigotry and paranoia. I could read transcripts of his secret tapes for hours on end, and in fact I have done just that. Who in the hell goes and makes an actual LIST of their enemies and opponents?!

But I have to believe that he was also a profoundly lonely man. He loved his wife and girls, but seemed to keep them at a deliberate arms length. There are no photos that I've ever seen of him giving Pat, Julie or Tricia a cuddle. But in the book "Dog Days at the White House" author Traphes Bryant describes an incident when President Nixon was given a new Labrador puppy named King Timahoe by some admirers in Maryland. Nixon was so delighted he actually got on his knees and hugged the dog. I almost cried reading it. And the way he broke down and wept at his wife's funeral was just too painful to witness.

Many don't know this but former President Clinton deeply respected Nixon for his sharp intelligence and diplomatic acumen. Toward the end of Nixon's life Clinton was in frequent contact with Nixon by phone, and even met with him a couple of times at the WH.

So what happened in the life of Richard Milhaus Nixon to cause these extremes in his personality? Vindictive, mean and paranoid on the one hand, and vulnerable, astute, wise on the other?

[HerbS]

Clapping!-Spiro-Who?-Gerald Ford from GR?-Jimmy C-from Georgia?-Herb

[Juan Marrero]

It's rather late for an addition to this thread, but I can't resist when the subject is Richard Nixon. I was in high school when he resigned and I recall my mother crying during his speech. Watching the heroic Pat Nixon walk to the helicpoter the next day was heart-breaking. I would place her in the category of First Ladies who left the White House after experiencing a trumatic loss, never to quite recover.

The Nixon tapes are a gift to his enemies and a bane to his admirers (the few left). It may or may not matter to his reputation at this point that the few minutes bigoted remarks and the really dumb ideas are those that are culled and broadcast each time the Archives releases a "new" batch of conversations. I imagine there is alot less titilation to the rest. Few people could, survive reputation intact, if their every meal conversation were recorded. But it was wrong for him to have recorded the conversations, tragic that he did not destroy the tapes and imprudent for Congress and the Supreme Court to have sought and ordered their release. I wonder if South Vietnam would have held, if "mad man" Nixon had been there to threaten Hanoi.

Does American history run on ridiculously predictable cycles? Lincon and Kennedy, assassinated; Johnson and Johnson, turbulent presidencies; Nixon, Johnson, and Grant: impeachment and scandals. You need almost a Tolstoyan view of history to account for this.

[HerbS]

Be carefull for what you ask for or wish for! Nixon lied to us about Cambodia and many other events in American history[I taught history for 35yrs]!

[Juan Marrero]

He will always be controversial. The important thing is for everything to be put on the table when he (like any other U.S. President is judged). My point is that the most publicized tapes show his worst side, one that, unfortunately, all (or AL aside) most "flesh is heir to." All presidents should be held up to the same standards.

Frankly, the "Trail of Tears", the "Palmer Raids" and Japanese Internment bother me more than Watergate, but I still think that Jackson/van Buren, Wilson and FDR were patriots who thought they were doing right, even in these instances.

We don't need a national "stock villain" among presidents because that will be all that is taught in school: "Well, kids here is what you need to know for your test: Kennedy: good. Nixon: real bad."